How Your Computer Reinforces Systemic Racism

This summer, my peers marched and spoke out against blatant acts of racial injustice. Meanwhile, as a 17-year-old student who dabbles in computer programming, I've been stewing about a newfangled, less-overt threat that also relates to systemic racism. What I did not realize until this summer was that my generation is already experiencing bias from our most trusted ally: the computer. If you are a student, you may have already been the target of some sort of algorithmic bias, even if you don't know it. Consider one telling fact: for a good number of high schoolers like myself who take state standardized tests, written essays might not be graded not by an English teacher, but by a robot! My first reaction to learning this was simple surprise; I had never thought that my essays might be graded by inanimate objects.